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• Big Data – ClustrixDB – Extreme Scale SQL Database with Real-time Analytics, Releases Software Download – NewSQL

  - by Pinal Dave

  There are so many things to learn and there is so little time we all have. As we have little time we need to be selective to learn whatever we learn. I believe I know quite a lot of things in SQL but I still do not know what is around SQL. I have started to learn about NewSQL recently. If you wonder what is NewSQL I encourage all of you to read my blog post about NewSQL over here Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21. NewSQL databases are quickly becoming popular – providing the scale of NoSQL with the SQL features and transactions. As a part of learning NewSQL database, I have recently started to learn about ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB has been the most mature NewSQL database used by some of the largest internet sites in the world for over 3 years, with extensive SQL support. In addition to scale, it provides fast real-time analytics by bringing massively parallel processing (MPP), available only in warehousing databases, to the transactional database. The reason I am more intrigued about learning ClustrixDB is their recent announcement on Oct 31. ClustrixDB was only available as an appliance, but now with their software release on Oct 31, everyone can use it. It is now available as forever free for up to 12 cores with community support, and there is a 45 day trial for unlimited cluster sizes. With the forever free world, I am indeed interested in ClustrixDB now. I know that few of the leading eCommerce sites in the world uses them for their transactional database. Here are few of the details I have quickly noted for ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB allows user to: Scale by simply adding nodes to the cluster with a single command Run billions of transactions a day Run fast real-time analytics Achieve high-availability with recovery from node failure Manages itself Easily migrate from MySQL as it is nearly plug-and-play compatible, use MySQL drivers, tools and replication. While I was going through the documentation I realized that ClustrixDB also has extensive support for SQL features including complex queries involving joins on a dozen or more tables, aggregates, sorts, sub-queries. It also supports stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, partitioned and temporary tables, and fully online schema changes. It is indeed a very matured product and SQL solution. Indeed Clusterix sound very promising solution, I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand who are current customers of the Clustrix as they exist in the industry for quite a few years. Their client list is indeed very interesting and here is my quick research about them. Twoo.com – Europe’s largest social discovery (dating) site runs 4.4 Billion Transactions a day with table sizes over a Terabyte, on a 168 core cluster. EngageBDR – Top 3 in the online advertising category uses ClustrixDB to serve 6.9 billion ads a day through real-time bidding platform. Their reports went from 4 hours to 15 seconds. NoMoreRack – Top 2 fastest growing e-commerce company in US used ClustrixDB for high availability and fast growth through Amazon cloud. MakeMyTrip – India’s leading travel site runs on ClustrixDB with two clusters running as multi-master in Chennai and Bangalore. Many enterprises such as AOL, CSC, Rakuten, Symantec use ClustrixDB when their applications need scale. I must accept that I am impressed with the information I have learned so far and now is the time to do some hand’s on experience with their product. I want to learn this technology so in future when it is about NewSQL, I know what I am talking about. Read more why Clustrix explains why you ClustrixDB might be the right database for you. Download ClustrixDB with me today and install it on your machine so in future when we discuss the technical aspects of it, we all are on the same page. The software can be downloaded here. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Clustrix

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• Stir Trek 2: Iron Man Edition

  Next month (7 May 2010) Ill be presenting at the second annual Stir Trek event in Columbus, Ohio. Stir Trek (so named because last year its themes mixed MIX and the opening of the Star Trek movie) is a very cool local event.  Its a lot of fun to present at and to attend, because of its unique venue: a movie theater.  And whats more, the cost of admission includes a private showing of a new movie (this year: Iron Man 2).  The sessions cover a variety of topics (not just Microsoft), similar to CodeMash.  The event recently sold out, so Im not telling you all of this so that you can go and sign up (though I believe you can get on the waitlist still).  Rather, this is pretty much just an excuse for me to talk about my session as a way to organize my thoughts. Im actually speaking on the same topic as I did last year, but the key difference is that last year the subject of my session was nowhere close to being released, and this year, its RTM (as of last week).  Thats right, the topic is Whats New in ASP.NET 4 how did you guess? Whats New in ASP.NET 4 So, just what *is* new in ASP.NET 4?  Hasnt Microsoft been spending all of their time on Silverlight and MVC the last few years?  Well, actually, no.  There are some pretty cool things that are now available out of the box in ASP.NET 4.  Theres a nice summary of the new features on MSDN.  Here is my super-brief summary: Extensible Output Caching use providers like distributed cache or file system cache Preload Web Applications IIS 7.5 only; avoid the startup tax for your site by preloading it. Permanent (301) Redirects are finally supported by the framework in one line of code, not two. Session State Compression Can speed up session access in a web farm environment.  Test it to see. Web Forms Features several of which mirror ASP.NET MVC advantages (viewstate, control ids) Set Meta Keywords and Description easily Granular and inheritable control over ViewState Support for more recent browsers and devices Routing (introduced in 3.5 SP1) some new features and zero web.config changes required Client ID control makes client manipulation of DOM elements much simpler. Row Selection in Data Controls fixed (id based, not row index based) FormView and ListView enhancements (less markup, more CSS compliant) New QueryExtender control makes filtering data from other Data Source Controls easy More CSS and Accessibility support Reduction of Tables and more control over output for other template controls Dynamic Data enhancements More control templates Support for inheritance in the Data Model New Attributes ASP.NET Chart Control (learn more) Lots of IDE enhancements Web Deploy tool My session will cover many but not all of these features.  Theres only an hour (3pm-4pm), and its right before the prize giveaway and movie showing, so Ill be moving quickly and most likely answering questions off-line via email after the talk. Hope to see you there! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• The Rise of Project Intelligence and Why It Matters

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By Amy DeWolf Are you doing any of these in your organization? How are you leveraging historical data to forecast projects? There’s a lot going on in government today. The economic pressures agencies feel from the uncertainty of budget cuts and sequestration effect every part of an organization, including the Project Management Office (PMO).  The PMO is responsible for monitoring and administering government IT projects. As time goes on, priorities shift, technology advances, and new regulations are imposed, all of which make planning and executing projects more difficult.  For example, think about your own projects.  How many boxes do you need to check and hoops do you need to jump through to ensure you comply with new regulations? While new regulations and technology advancements can be a good thing, they add an additional layer of complexity to already complex projects. To overcome some of these pressures, particularly new regulations, many in the PMO world are adopting a new approach- Project Intelligence (PI). According to a new Oracle Primavera white paper, The Rise of Project Intelligence: When Project Management is Just Not Enough, “PI uses Business Intelligence methods to leverage historical project data to make more informed decisions and greatly enhance project execution.” Currently, project managers plan and forecast the possible phases in an execution cycle.  However, most project managers don’t have the proper tools to do this as effectively as they would like. As the white paper noted, “The underlying deficiencies in most forecasting approaches are that 1) the PM fails in most instances to leverage historical data and 2) the PM doesn’t employ current Business Intelligence tools.” PI seeks to overturn this by combining modeling tools used in Business Intelligence for projects with the understanding of Emotional Intelligence for managing people.   Simply put, Project Intelligence is built off four main pillars: Actively use historical data to forecast project cycles Understand the intricacies of complex projects Enhance social and emotional intelligence in projects Actively use Business intelligence tools Read our complimentary whitepaper and discover the importance of emotional intelligence and best practices for improving projects, specifically in terms of communication.

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• Slow wired internet connection on Realtek RTL8168-8111 (Rev 6)

  - by Mark

  I keep on seeing issues people are having with their wireless. I am having an issue with being wired into my router. I installed Ubuntu 11.10 the other day, on my custom PC. The motherboard I have installed on this PC is an ASUS P8H61-M. The issue I am having is with my speed. I have a dual boot, windows 7 and the new Ubuntu. On my Windows install I am getting test speeds from Speakeasy at 17Mbps and actual downloads around 2-3MB/s. With Ubuntu, I am getting test speeds from Speakeasy at 1.14Mbps and actual downloads around 60KB/s. I have disabled IPv6 and am no using GoogleDNS for my DNS, but it hasn't resolved the issue. I have scanned my router (WRT54GS Linksys) to disable IPv6 connections, and I am not seeing any option for that. I cannot figure out why I am getting such sluggish internet connection. Any help to resolve would be great! I performed an iconfig -a with these results: mark@Mark-ASUS:~$ ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr f4:6d:04:d1:2c:4e inet addr:192.168.1.103 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::f66d:4ff:fed1:2c4e/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:21888 errors:0 dropped:21888 overruns:0 frame:21888 TX packets:21068 errors:0 dropped:90 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:26348337 (26.3 MB) TX bytes:2217140 (2.2 MB) Interrupt:46 Base address:0xc000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:952 (952.0 B) TX bytes:952 (952.0 B) My specs are: mark@Mark-ASUS:~$ sudo lspci -nn 04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 06) 06:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device [1b21:1080] (rev 01) udev information: KERNEL[11.351405] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 (net) UDEV_LOG=3 ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 SUBSYSTEM=net INTERFACE=eth0 IFINDEX=2 SEQNUM=1542 UDEV [11.363905] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 (net) UDEV_LOG=3 ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 SUBSYSTEM=net INTERFACE=eth0 IFINDEX=2 SEQNUM=1542 ID_VENDOR_FROM_DATABASE=Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. ID_MODEL_FROM_DATABASE=RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller ID_BUS=pci ID_VENDOR_ID=0x10ec ID_MODEL_ID=0x8168 ID_MM_CANDIDATE=1 dmesg information: [ 2.855982] r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded [ 2.856366] r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: RTL8168b/8111b at 0xffffc9000064c000, f4:6d:04:d1:2c:4e, XID 0c900800 IRQ 46 [ 12.540956] r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link down [ 12.540961] r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link down [ 12.541173] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready I took out a lot of information that did not pertain to eth0, because the previous edits wouldn't save. If I need any more information, let me know. I would love to get this resolved. The other issue I am noticing is sometimes my connection disconnects all together, for about a minute, then it reconnects.

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• Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer

  - by TheBeefMightBeTough

  I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws.

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• PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Working and Studying in Oracle, how I balance my time....

  - by anca.rosu

  Hi, my name is Laura. I am working as an Intern within Executive Administration at Oracle Denmark, whilst studying Information Management at Copenhagen Business school. I have recently handeding a paper on Information Systems which gave me exposure to Oracle. Once completing this paper I came across a job posting on my University’s intranet site and I applied directly online. When I submitted my application for the job offer, I wondered about what language I should use for the application form, as the job posting was in Danish, but the contact person and number looked Irish. I therefore chose English. Later that same day, Fiona, one of Oracle’s Graduates Recruitment Consultants based in Ireland, contacted me. This shows how global Oracle truly is. I went for my face-to-face interview in Oracle Denmark with Charlotte, one of the team managers. I spent 5 minutes waiting in the lobby, just looking around, thinking to myself, I really want to work here. The atmosphere seemed so pleasant with a relaxed approach between colleagues, employees and guests. The interview took about an hour, but we touched on a lot of different subjects. The profile I got of Oraclewas that this is a place where you are encouraged to think for yourself, and you are given the freedom to use your ideas. Later that evening, Fiona called and offered me the job. I was very happy. At Oracle Denmark we have 4 different zones: a Quiet Zone, a Project Zone, a Dialogue Zone and a Call Zone. Everyday when you arrive you consider what will be the most productive for the day’s task, and you take your toolbox and go find a desk in the zone you have decided on. It is therefore very unusual to be next to the same person two days in a row. At Oracle, people are located all over the world, and everybody has team members, colleagues or leaders in other countries, or even other time zones. Initially,I was worried about how I would adapt to this approach but I soon realized I had nothing to worry about and now I appreciate working this way. My colleagues have been very supportive and they have openly welcomed me into my new role. I typically work two days a week and have three days at University. During exam periods, I have the flexibility to work less hours and focus on the exams, in return for putting in more hours at work when needed. The first time I had to ask for time off before handing in a paper, my boss looked at me and said, ”Of course! Your education is the most important!” I hope that by sharing my experiences with you, I can inspire or encourage you to consider Oracle as a potential employer, where you can grow both professionally and personally. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com Technorati Tags: Intern,Oracle Denmark,Information Systems,Business school,Copenhagen,Graduates Recruitment,Ireland,Quiet Zone,Project Zone,Dialogue Zone,Call Zone,University,flexibility

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• UPOS RFIDScanner data format

  - by Robert Snyder

  A lot of work that I do currently is based in the OPOS/UPOS world. My company has a device that can read 13.56Mhz tags (RFID), Smart Cards, and Mag Stripe cards. Up until somewhat recently I have only been working with RFID for a very specific scenario. That was to read UltraLight C and Desfire cards. These cards were all setup very specifically so that I could take the data read from those cards and force it into a MSR track2 format. The past couple of weeks, however, I have been working on reading RFID credit cards (since I have a Visa card I've been using mine), and Smart Card credit cards. (The visa card I have has both) In learning how to communicate with SmartCard and reading ISO7816 and EMVCO documents I became a little more familiar with how info is stored. But now I have a question regarding UPOS. The RFID data on my Visa is stored (and read) very similar to how the data is stored and read from the Smart Card on my Visa. Cool. Well in the UPOS spec for SmartCardRW the ReadData method returns a byte array. That's cool, I can just return all that data and then parse it as my heart desires. The RFID though has a LinkedList of Tags. Well this makes sense in terms of my Visa card (reminds me of a question I have in regards to SmartCard, but that is for another question) but what about ULC and Desfire, or for that matter any Mifare card. Pages, Files, Purses don't exactly fit the Tag profile. For instance lets just say I read pages 4-12 on my ULC card. Each page I read is 4 bytes long. Does this mean I have 9 tags in my LinkedList? Is my Tag id the page number? Or then how does that translate to Desfire? I open application 123456 and read file 1 and file 2, Do I have 2 tags? and if so what is my tag id? At least with my Visa I think that I have to use the Tag id (ex 5F24 for my expiration date) and value of {0x15, 0x10, 0x31} Part of me says yes..that makes sense. Another part of me says, "well if that is the case then why doesn't SmartCardRW have Tags?" So that is my question. How do I format my data from those different types of media? or is that the job of my Control Object (the application)? Is so how does it know? The only protocols I have are: // Summary: // Enumerates the available predefined RFID tag protocols the device supports. [Flags] public enum RFIDProtocols { EpcClass0 = 1, RFIDSdt0Plus = 2, EpcClass1 = 4, EpcClass1Gen2 = 8, EpcClass2 = 16, Iso14443A = 4096, Iso14443B = 8192, Iso15693 = 12288, Iso180006B = 16384, Other = 16777216, All = 1073741824, } If I use that well all of my cards that I have are all Iso14443A. I use the ATQA and the SAK to know what type of card I really have. There is no RFID property that lets me specify that. So I'm lost.

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• How to get faster graphics in KVM? VNC is painfully slow with Haiku OS guest, Spice won't install and SDL doesn't work

  - by Don Quixote

  I've been coming up to speed on the Haiku operating system, an Open Source clone of BeOS 5 Pro. I'm using an Apple MacBook Pro as my development machine. Apple's BootCamp BIOS does not support more than four partitions on the internal hard drive. While I can set up extended and logical partitions, doing so will prevent any of the installed operating systems from booting. To run Haiku directly on the iron, I boot it off a USB stick. Using external storage is also helpful because I am perpetually out of filesystem space. While VirtualBox is documented to allow access to physical drives, I could not actually get it to work. Also VirtualBox can only use one of the host CPU's cores. While VB guests can be configured for more than one CPU, they are only emulated. A full build of the Haiku OS takes 4.5 under VB. I had the hope of reducing build times by using KVM instead, but it's not working nearly as well as VirtualBox did. The Linux Kernel Virtual Machine is broken in all manner of fundamental ways as seen from Haiku. But I'm a coder; maybe I could contribute to fixing some of those problems. The first problem I've got is that Haiku's video in virt-manager is quite painfully slow. When I drag Haiku windows around the desktop, they lag quite far behind where my mouse is. It's quite difficult to move a window to a precise position on the screen. Just imagine that the mouse was connected to the window title bar with a really stretchy spring. Also Haiku's mouse lags quite far behind where I have moved it. I found lots of Personal Package Archives that enable Spice from QEMU / KVM at the Ubuntu Personal Package Arhives. I tried a few of the PPAs but none of them worked; with one of them, the command "add-apt-repository" crashed with a traceback. There is a Wiki page about Spice, but it says that it only works on 64-bit. My Early 2006 MacBook Pro is 32-bit. Its Apple Model Identifier is MacBookPro1,1; these use Core Duos NOT Core 2 Duos. I don't mind building a source deb for 32-bit if I can expect it to work. Is there some reason that Spice should be 64-bit only? Does it need features of the x86_64 Instruction Set Architecture that x86 does not have? When I try using SDL from virt-manager, the configuration for Local SDL Window says "Xauth: /home/mike/.Xauthority". When I try to start my guest, virt-manager emits an error. When I Googled the error message, the usual solution was to make ~/.Xauthority readible. However, .Xauthorty does not exist in my home directory. Instead I have a $XAUTHORITY environment variable. There is no way to configure SDL in virt-manager to use $XAUTHORITY instead of ~/.Xauthority. Neither does it work to copy the value of $XAUTHORITY into the file. I am ready to scream, because I've been five fscking days trying to make KVM work for Haiku development. There is a whole lot more that is broken than the slow video. All I really want to do for now is speed up my full builds of Haiku by using "jam -j2" to use both cores in my CPU. I may try Xen next, but the last time I monkeyed with Xen it was far, far more broken than I am finding KVM to be. Just for now, I would be satisfied if there were some way to use my USB stick as a drive in VirtualBox. VB does allow me to configure /dev/sdb as a drive, but it always causes a fatal error when I try to launch the guest. Thank You For Any Advice You Can Give Me. -

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• Silverlight Cream for January 15, 2011 -- #1028

  - by Dave Campbell

  Note to #1024 Swag Winners: I'm sending emails to the vendors Sunday night, thanks for your patience (a few of you have not contacted me yet) In this Issue: Ezequiel Jadib, Daniel Egan(-2-), Page Brooks, Jason Zander, Andrej Tozon, Marlon Grech, Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Sacha Barber, William E. Burrows, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1" Page Brooks WP7: "Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7" Jason Zander Training: "WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs" Daniel Egan From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Rough Cut Editor SP1 Released Ezequiel Jadib has an announcement about the Rough Cut Editor SP1 release, and he walks you through the content, installation and a bit of the initial use. WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs Daniel Egan posted Part 1 of 3 of a new WP7 HOL ... video online and material to download... get 'em while they're hot! WP7 Saving to Media Library Daniel Egan has another post up as well on saving an image to the media library... not the update from Tim Heuer... all good info Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1 This freakin' cool post from Page Brooks is the first one of a series on building a 'Radar Control' in Silverlight ... seriously, go to the bottom and run the demo... I pretty much guarantee you'll take the next link which is download the code... don't forget to read the article too! Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 Jason Zander has a nice-looking tutorial up on dynamic tile notifications... good diagrams and discussion and plenty of code. Reactive.buffering.from event. Andrej Tozon is continuing his Reactive Extensions posts with this one on buffering: BufferWithTime and BufferWIthCount ... good stuff, good write-up, and the start of a WP7 game? MEFedMVVM with PRISM 4 Marlon Grech combines his MEFedMVVM with Prism 4, and says it was easy... check out the post and the code. Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #40 Jonathan van de Veen has a discussion up about things you need to pay attention to as your project gets close to first deployment... lots of good information to think about Silverlight or not. Customize Windows 7 Preview pane for XAML files Walt Ritscher has a (very easy) XAML extension for Windows 7 that allows previewing of XAML files in an explorer window... as our UK friends say "Brilliant!" Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client From the never-ending stream of posts that is Jesse Liberty comes this one on EF Code-First... so Jesse's describing Code-First and OData all wrapped up about a WP7 app Sterling Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Database Triggers and Auto-Identity Sterling and Database Triggers sitting in a tree... woot for WP7 from Jeremy Likness... provides database solutions including Validation, Data-specific concerns such as 'last modified', and post-save processing ... all good, Jeremy! A Look At Fluent APIs Sacha Barber has a great post up that isn't necessarily Silverlight, but is it? ... we've been hearing a lot about Fluent APIs... read on to see what the buzz is. Windows Phone 7 - Part 3 - Final Application William E. Burrows has Part 3 of his WP7 tutorial series up... this one completing the Golf Handicap app by giving the user the ability to manage scores. User Control vs Custom Control in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great diagram and description-filled post up on User Controls and Custom Controls in WP7... good external links too. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Pro/con of using Angular directives for complex form validation/ GUI manipulation

  - by tengen

  I am building a new SPA front end to replace an existing enterprise's legacy hodgepodge of systems that are outdated and in need of updating. I am new to angular, and wanted to see if the community could give me some perspective. I'll state my problem, and then ask my question. I have to generate several series of check boxes based on data from a .js include, with data like this: $scope.fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap = [ {'id':"CAPITAL PRESERVATION", 'name':"Capital Preservation"}, {'id':"STABLE", 'name':"Moderate"}, {'id':"BALANCED", 'name':"Moderate Growth"}, // etc {'id':"NONE", 'name':"None"} ]; The checkboxes are created using an ng-repeat, like this: <div ng-repeat="investmentObjective in fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap"> ... </div> However, I needed the values represented by the checkboxes to map to a different model (not just 2-way-bound to the fieldmappings object). To accomplish this, I created a directive, which accepts a destination array destarray which is eventually mapped to the model. I also know I need to handle some very specific gui controls, such as unchecking "None" if anything else gets checked, or checking "None" if everything else gets unchecked. Also, "None" won't be an option in every group of checkboxes, so the directive needs to be generic enough to accept a validation function that can fiddle with the checked state of the checkbox group's inputs based on what's already clicked, but smart enough not to break if there is no option called "NONE". I started to do that by adding an ng-click which invoked a function in the controller, but in looking around Stack Overflow, I read people saying that its bad to put DOM manipulation code inside your controller - it should go in directives. So do I need another directive? So far: (html): <input my-checkbox-group type="checkbox" fieldobj="investmentObjective" ng-click="validationfunc()" validationfunc="clearOnNone()" destarray="investor.investmentObjective" /> Directive code: .directive("myCheckboxGroup", function () { return { restrict: "A", scope: { destarray: "=", // the source of all the checkbox values fieldobj: "=", // the array the values came from validationfunc: "&" // the function to be called for validation (optional) }, link: function (scope, elem, attrs) { if (scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id) !== -1) { elem[0].checked = true; } elem.bind('click', function () { var index = scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id); if (elem[0].checked) { if (index === -1) { scope.destarray.push(scope.fieldobj.id); } } else { if (index !== -1) { scope.destarray.splice(index, 1); } } }); } }; }) .js controller snippet: .controller( 'SuitabilityCtrl', ['$scope', function ( $scope ) { $scope.clearOnNone = function() { // naughty jQuery DOM manipulation code that // looks at checkboxes and checks/unchecks as needed }; The above code is done and works fine, except the naughty jquery code in clearOnNone(), which is why I wrote this question. And here is my question: after ALL this, I think to myself - I could be done already if I just manually handled all this GUI logic and validation junk with jQuery written in my controller. At what point does it become foolish to write these complicated directives that future developers will have to puzzle over more than if I had just written jQuery code that 99% of us would understand with a glance? How do other developers draw the line? I see this all over Stack Overflow. For example, this question seems like it could be answered with a dozen lines of straightforward jQuery, yet he has opted to do it the angular way, with a directive and a partial... it seems like a lot of work for a simple problem. Specifically, I suppose I would like to know: how SHOULD I be writing the code that checks whether "None" has been selected (if it exists as an option in this group of checkboxes), and then check/uncheck the other boxes accordingly? A more complex directive? I can't believe I'm the only developer that is having to implement code that is more complex than needed just to satisfy an opinionated framework.

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• AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  Bad accelerometer controls kill otherwise good games. I decided to try to do something about it. So I create an XNA GameComponent called AccelerometerInput. It’s still a beta project but you are welcome to try it, use it, modify it, etc. I’m releasing under the terms of the Microsoft Public License. Important info: First, it only supports tilt-style controls currently. I have not implemented motion-style controls yet (and make no promises as to when I might find time to do so). Second, I commented it heavily so that you can (hopefully) understand what it is doing. Please read the comments and examine the sample game for a usage overview. There are configurable parameters which I encourage you to make use of (both by modifying the default values where your testing shows it to be appropriate and also by implementing a calibration mechanism in your game that lets the user adjust those configurable values based on his or her own circumstances). Third, even with this code, accelerometer controls are still a fairly advanced topic area; you will likely find nothing but disappointment if you simply plunk this into some project without testing it on a device (or preferably on several devices). Fourth, if you do try this code and find that something doesn’t work as expected on your phone, please let me know as I want to improve it and can only do so with your help. Let me know what phone model it is, what you tried doing, what you expected, and what result you had instead. I may or may not be able to incorporate it into the code, but I can let others know at the very least so that they can make appropriate modifications to their games (I’m hopeful that all phones are reasonably similar in their workings and require, at most, a slight calibration change, but I simply don’t know). Fifth, although I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have about it, I’m very busy with a number of things currently so it might take a little while. Please look through the code and examine the comments and sample game first before asking any questions. It’s likely that the answer is in there. If not, or if you just aren’t really sure, ask away. Sixth, there are differences between a portrait-mode game and a landscape mode game (specifically in the appropriate default tilt adjustment for toward the user/away from the user calculations). This is documented and the default is set for landscape. If you use this for a portrait game, make the appropriate change (look for the TODO: comment in AccelerometerInput.cs). Seventh, no provision whatsoever is made for disabling screen locking. It is up to you to implement that and to take appropriate measures to detect when the user has been idle for too long and timeout the game. That code is very game-specific. If you have questions about such matters, consult the relevant MSDN documentation and, if you still have questions, visit the App Hub forums and ask there. I answer questions there a lot and so I may even stumble across your question and answer it. But that’s a much better forum than the comments section here for questions of that sort so I would appreciate it if you asked idle detection-related questions there (or on some other suitable site that you may be more familiar and comfortable with). Eighth, this is an XNA GameComponent intended for XNA-based games on WP7. A sufficiently knowledgeable Silverlight developer should have no problem adapting it for use in a Silverlight game or app. I may create a Silverlight version at some point myself. Right now I do not have the time, unfortunately. Ok. Without further ado: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/AccelerometerInput.zip Have a great St. Patrick’s Day!

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• What is the best practice, point of view of well experienced developers

  - by Damien MIRAS

  My manager pushes me to use his self defined best practices. All of these practices are based on is own assumptions. I disagree with them and I would like to have some feedback of well experienced people about these practices. I would prefer answers from people involved in the maintenance of huge products and people whom have maintained the product for years. Developers with 15+ years of experience are preferred because my manager has that much experience himself. I have 7 years of experience. Here are the practices he wants me to use: never extends classes, use composition and interface instead because extending classes are unmaintainable and difficult to debug. What I think about that Extend when needed, respect "Liskov's Substitution Principle" and you'll never be stuck with a problem, but prefer composition and decoration. I don't know any serious project which has banned inheriting, sometimes it's impossible to not use that, i.e. in a UI framework. Design patterns are just unusable. In PHP, for simple use cases (for example a user needs a web interface to view a database table), his "best practice" is: copy some random php code wich we own, paste and modify it, put html and php code in same file, never use classes in PHP, it doesn't work well for small jobs, and in fact it doesn't work well at all, there is no good tool to work with. Copy & paste PHP code is good practice for maintenance because scripts are independent, if you have a bug somewhere you can fix it without side effects. What I think about that: NEVER EVER COPY code or do it because you have five minutes to deliver something, you will do some refactoring after that. Copy & paste code is a beginners error, if you have errors you'll have the error everywhere any time you have pasted it's a nightmare to maintain. If you repsect the "Open Close Principle" you'll rarely get edge effects, use unit test if you are afraid of that. For small jobs in PHP use at least something you get or write the HTML separately from the PHP code and reuse it any time you need it. Classes in PHP are mature, not as mature as other languages like python or java, but they are usable. There is tools to work with classes in PHP like Zend Studio that work very well. The use of classes or not depends not on the language you use but the programming paradigm you have choosen. I'm a OOP developer, I use PHP5, why do I have to shoot myself in the foot? When you find a simple bug in the code, and you can fix it simply, if you are not working on the code where you have found it, never fix it, even if it takes 5 seconds. He says to me his "best practices" are driven by the fact that he has a lot of experience in maintaining software in production (14 years) and he now knows what works and what doesn't work, what the community says is a fad, and the people advocating such principles as never copy & paste code, are not evolved in maintaining applications. What I think about that: If you find a bug fix it if you can do it quickly inform the people who've touched that code before, check if you have not introduced a new bug, ideally add a unit test for it. I currently work on a web commerce project, which serves 15k unique users per day. The code base has to be maintained and has been maintained this way since 2005. Ideally you include a short description of your position and experience in terms of years effectively maintaining an application which has been in production for real.

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• Extrapolation breaks collision detection

  - by user22241

  Before applying extrapolation to my sprite's movement, my collision worked perfectly. However, after applying extrapolation to my sprite's movement (to smooth things out), the collision no longer works. This is how things worked before extrapolation: However, after I implement my extrapolation, the collision routine breaks. I am assuming this is because it is acting upon the new coordinate that has been produced by the extrapolation routine (which is situated in my render call ). After I apply my extrapolation How to correct this behaviour? I've tried puting an extra collision check just after extrapolation - this does seem to clear up a lot of the problems but I've ruled this out because putting logic into my rendering is out of the question. I've also tried making a copy of the spritesX position, extrapolating that and drawing using that rather than the original, thus leaving the original intact for the logic to pick up on - this seems a better option, but it still produces some weird effects when colliding with walls. I'm pretty sure this also isn't the correct way to deal with this. I've found a couple of similar questions on here but the answers haven't helped me. This is my extrapolation code: public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) { //Set/Re-set loop back to 0 to start counting again loops=0; while(System.currentTimeMillis() > nextGameTick && loops < maxFrameskip){ SceneManager.getInstance().getCurrentScene().updateLogic(); nextGameTick+=skipTicks; timeCorrection += (1000d/ticksPerSecond) % 1; nextGameTick+=timeCorrection; timeCorrection %=1; loops++; tics++; } extrapolation = (float)(System.currentTimeMillis() + skipTicks - nextGameTick) / (float)skipTicks; render(extrapolation); } Applying extrapolation render(float extrapolation){ //This example shows extrapolation for X axis only. Y position (spriteScreenY is assumed to be valid) extrapolatedPosX = spriteGridX+(SpriteXVelocity*dt)*extrapolation; spriteScreenPosX = extrapolationPosX * screenWidth; drawSprite(spriteScreenX, spriteScreenY); } Edit As I mentioned above, I have tried making a copy of the sprite's coordinates specifically to draw with.... this has it's own problems. Firstly, regardless of the copying, when the sprite is moving, it's super-smooth, when it stops, it's wobbling slightly left/right - as it's still extrapolating it's position based on the time. Is this normal behavior and can we 'turn it off' when the sprite stops? I've tried having flags for left / right and only extrapolating if either of these is enabled. I've also tried copying the last and current positions to see if there is any difference. However, as far as collision goes, these don't help. If the user is pressing say, the right button and the sprite is moving right, when it hits a wall, if the user continues to hold the right button down, the sprite will keep animating to the right, while being stopped by the wall (therefore not actually moving), however because the right flag is still set and also because the collision routine is constantly moving the sprite out of the wall, it still appear to the code (not the player) that the sprite is still moving, and therefore extrapolation continues. So what the player would see, is the sprite 'static' (yes, it's animating, but it's not actually moving across the screen), and every now and then it shakes violently as the extrapolation attempts to do it's thing....... Hope this help

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• Cloud hosted CI for .NET projects

  - by Scott Dorman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2014/06/02/cloud-hosted-ci-for-.net-projects.aspxContinuous integration (CI) is important. If you don’t have it set up…you should. There are a lot of different options available for hosting your own CI server, but they all require you to maintain your own infrastructure. If you’re a business, that generally isn’t a problem. However, if you have some open source projects hosted, for example on GitHub, there haven’t really been any options. That has changed with the latest release of AppVeyor, which bills itself as “Continuous integration for busy developers.” What’s different about AppVeyor is that it’s a hosted solution. Why is that important? By being a hosted solution, it means that I don’t have to maintain my own infrastructure for a build server. How does that help if you’re hosting an open source project? AppVeyor has a really competitive pricing plan. For an unlimited amount of public repositories, it’s free. That gives you a cloud hosted CI system for all of your GitHub projects for the cost of some time to set them up, which actually isn’t hard to do at all. I have several open source projects (hosted at https://github.com/scottdorman), so I signed up using my GitHub credentials. AppVeyor fully supported my two-factor authentication with GitHub, so I never once had to enter my password for GitHub into AppVeyor. Once it was done, I authorized GitHub and it instantly found all of the repositories I have (both the ones I created and the ones I cloned from elsewhere). You can even add “build badges” to your markdown files in GitHub, so anyone who visits your project can see the status of the lasted build. Out of the box, you can simply select a repository, add the build project, click New Build and wait for the build to complete. You now have a complete CI server running for your project. The best part of this, besides the fact that it “just worked” with almost zero configuration is that you can configure it through a web-based interface which is very streamlined, clean and easy to use or you can use a appveyor.yml file. This means that you can define your CI build process (including any scripts that might need to be run, etc.) in a standard file format (the YAML format) and store it in your repository. The benefits to that are huge. The file becomes a versioned artifact in your source control system, so it can be branched, merged, and is completely transparent to anyone working on the project. By the way, AppVeyor isn’t limited to just GitHub. It currently supports GitHub, BitBucket, Visual Studio Online, and Kiln. I did have a few issues getting one of my projects to build, but the same day I posted the problem to the support forum a fix was deployed, and I had a functioning CI build about 5 minutes after that. Since then, I’ve provided some additional feature requests and had a few other questions, all of which have seen responses within a 24-hour period. I have to say that it’s easily been one of the best customer support experiences I’ve seen in a long time. AppVeyor is still young, so it doesn’t yet have full feature parity with some of the older (more established) CI systems available,  but it’s getting better all the time and I have no doubt that it will quickly catch up to those other CI systems and then pass them. The bottom line, if you’re looking for a good cloud-hosted CI system for your .NET-based projects, look at AppVeyor.

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.”

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• PASS Summit 2013 Review

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  As a long-standing member of PASS who lives in the greater Seattle area and has attended about nine of these Summits, let me start out by saying how GREAT it was to go to Charlotte, North Carolina this year.  Many of the new folks that I met at the Summit this year, upon hearing that I was from Seattle, commented that I must have been disappointed to have to travel to the Summit this year after 5 years in a row in Seattle.  Well, nothing could be further from the truth.  I cheered loudly when I first heard that the 2013 Summit would be outside Seattle.  I have many fond memories of trips to Orlando, Florida and Grapevine, Texas for past Summits (missed out on Denver, unfortunately).  And there is a funny dynamic that takes place when the conference is local.  If you do as I have done the last several years and saved my company money by not getting a hotel, but rather just commuting from home, then both family and coworkers tend to act like you’re just on a normal schedule.  For example, I have a young family, and my wife and kids really wanted to still see me come home “after work”, but there are a whole lot of after-hours activities, social events, and great food to be enjoyed at the Summit each year.  Even more so if you really capitalize on the opportunities to meet face-to-face with people you either met at previous summits or have spoken to or heard of, from Twitter, blogs, and forums.  Then there is also the lovely commuting in Seattle traffic from neighboring cities rather than the convenience of just walking across the street from your hotel.  So I’m just saying, there are really nice aspects of having the conference 2500 miles away. Beyond that, the training was fantastic as usual.  The SQL Server community has many outstanding presenters and experts with deep knowledge of the tools who are extremely willing to share all of that with anyone who wants to listen.  The opening video with PASS President Bill Graziano in a NASCAR race turned dream sequence was very well done, and the keynotes, as usual, were great.  This year I was particularly impressed with how well attended were the Professional Development sessions.  Not too many years ago, those were very sparsely attended, but this year, the two that I attended were standing-room only, and these were not tiny rooms.  I would say this is a testament to both the maturity of the attendees realizing how important these topics are to career success, as well as to the ever-increasing skills of the presenters and the program committee for selecting speakers and topics that resonated with people.  If, as is usually the case, you were not able to get to every session that you wanted to because there were just too darn many good ones, I encourage you to get the recordings. Overall, it was a great time as these events always are.  It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, and the people of Charlotte did an awesome job hosting the event and letting their hospitality shine (extra kudos to SQLSentry for all they did with the shuttle, maps, and other event sponsorships).  We’re back in Seattle next year (it is a release year, after all) but I would say that with the success of this year’s event, I strongly encourage the Board and PASS HQ to firmly reestablish the location rotation schedule.  I’ll even go so far as to suggest standardizing on an alternating Seattle – Charlotte schedule, or something like that. If you missed the Summit this year, start saving now, and register early, so you can join us!

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• Know your Data Lineage

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

  An academic paper without the footnotes isn’t an academic paper. Journalists wouldn’t base a news article on facts that they can’t verify. So why would anyone publish reports without being able to say where the data has come from and be confident of its quality, in other words, without knowing its lineage. (sometimes referred to as ‘provenance’ or ‘pedigree’) The number and variety of data sources, both traditional and new, increases inexorably. Data comes clean or dirty, processed or raw, unimpeachable or entirely fabricated. On its journey to our report, from its source, the data can travel through a network of interconnected pipes, passing through numerous distinct systems, each managed by different people. At each point along the pipeline, it can be changed, filtered, aggregated and combined. When the data finally emerges, how can we be sure that it is right? How can we be certain that no part of the data collection was based on incorrect assumptions, that key data points haven’t been left out, or that the sources are good? Even when we’re using data science to give us an approximate or probable answer, we cannot have any confidence in the results without confidence in the data from which it came. You need to know what has been done to your data, where it came from, and who is responsible for each stage of the analysis. This information represents your data lineage; it is your stack-trace. If you’re an analyst, suspicious of a number, it tells you why the number is there and how it got there. If you’re a developer, working on a pipeline, it provides the context you need to track down the bug. If you’re a manager, or an auditor, it lets you know the right things are being done. Lineage tracking is part of good data governance. Most audit and lineage systems require you to buy into their whole structure. If you are using Hadoop for your data storage and processing, then tools like Falcon allow you to track lineage, as long as you are using Falcon to write and run the pipeline. It can mean learning a new way of running your jobs (or using some sort of proxy), and even a distinct way of writing your queries. Other Hadoop tools provide a lot of operational and audit information, spread throughout the many logs produced by Hive, Sqoop, MapReduce and all the various moving parts that make up the eco-system. To get a full picture of what’s going on in your Hadoop system you need to capture both Falcon lineage and the data-exhaust of other tools that Falcon can’t orchestrate. However, the problem is bigger even that that. Often, Hadoop is just one piece in a larger processing workflow. The next step of the challenge is how you bind together the lineage metadata describing what happened before and after Hadoop, where ‘after’ could be  a data analysis environment like R, an application, or even directly into an end-user tool such as Tableau or Excel. One possibility is to push as much as you can of your key analytics into Hadoop, but would you give up the power, and familiarity of your existing tools in return for a reliable way of tracking lineage? Lineage and auditing should work consistently, automatically and quietly, allowing users to access their data with any tool they require to use. The real solution, therefore, is to create a consistent method by which to bring lineage data from these data various disparate sources into the data analysis platform that you use, rather than being forced to use the tool that manages the pipeline for the lineage and a different tool for the data analysis. The key is to keep your logs, keep your audit data, from every source, bring them together and use the data analysis tools to trace the paths from raw data to the answer that data analysis provides.

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• Ubiquitous BIP

  - by Tim Dexter

  The last number I heard from Mike and the PM team was that BIP is now embedded in more than 40 oracle products. That's a lot of products to keep track of and to help out with new releases, etc. Its interesting to see how internal Oracle product groups have integrated BIP into their products. Just as you might integrate BIP they have had to make a choice about how to integrate. 1. Library level - BIP is a pure java app and at the bottom of the architecture are a group of java libraries that expose APIs that you can use. they fall into three main areas, data extraction, template processing and formatting and delivery. There are post processing capabilities but those APIs are embedded withing the template processing libraries. Taking this integration route you are going to need to manage templates, data extraction and processing. You'll have your own UI to allow users to control all of this for themselves. Ultimate control but some effort to build and maintain. I have been trawling some of the products during a coffee break. I found a great post on the reporting capabilities provided by BIP in the records management product within WebCenter Content 11g. This integration falls into the first category, content manager looks after the report artifacts itself and provides you the UI to manage and run the reports. 2. Web Service level - further up in the stack is the web service layer. This is sitting on the BI Publisher server as a set of services, runReport and scheduleReport are the main protagonists. However, you can also manage the reports and users (locally managed) on the server and the catalog itself via the services layer.Taking this route, you still need to provide the user interface to choose reports and run them but the creation and management of the reports is all handled by the Publisher server. I have worked with a few customer on this approach. The web services provide the ability to retrieve a list of reports the user can access; then the parameters and LOVs for the selected report and finally a service to submit the report on the server. 3. Embedded BIP server UI- the final level is not so well supported yet. You can currently embed a report and its various levels of surrounding  'chrome' inside another html based application using a URL. Check the docs here. The look and feel can be customized but again, not easy, nor documented. I have messed with running the server pages inside an IFRAME, not bad, but not great. Taking this path should present the least amount of effort on your part to get BIP integrated but there are a few gotchas you need to get around. So a reasonable amount of choices with varying amounts of effort involved. There is another option coming soon for all you ADF developers out there, the ability to drop a BIP report into your application pages. But that's for another post.

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• Best triple head display setup

  - by dgel

  I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 with a darn good triple head display setup. I've got a VisionTek 900530 Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 PCI Express video card that has two DVI outputs and one Mini DisplayPort that I have connected to a HDMI adapter. I'm running three identical Asus 1920x1080 monitors that each have a DVI, VGA, and HDMI input. I'm using the xorg-edgers ppa, so I'm using the open source radeon driver version 6.99.99. I tried using the ATI binary fglrx driver, but I wasn't able to get the three monitors working properly- the monitor connected via HDMI / DisplayPort wouldn't run at full resolution. The setup is almost perfect: Compiz runs fine and is quite snappy. I'm not able to use that great compiz feature where you can drag a window to the side of a display and it will half maximize. I occasionally experience display corruption weirdness with Unity and need to restart it. When I use a dropdown menu in LibreOffice it often pops the menu down in another window. For example, if I'm using the center monitor and click the Insert menu, the menu pulls down on the monitor to my right, forcing me to chase it. If I chase down the menu and choose Manual Break, the dialog appears over on my left monitor. This absurdity is mildly entertaining but has lost its novelty. I've decided to build a new system and have spared no expense- latest i7 processor, SSD, etc. I really like the performance of the Nvidia binary drivers, so I put two ZOTAC ZT-40707-10L GeForce GT 440 in the system, figuring I'd have four DVI outputs and an awesome triple (or even eventually quad) head setup. Unfortunately it appears that I didn't do sufficient research before my purchase. It seems that Nvidia TwinView only supports two monitors on one card (I guess that's why they call it TwinView...). I messed around with running two X servers, but I really don't want that- being able to drag windows to any monitor is critical. It doesn't sound like Xinerama is an option because from what I understand it simply doesn't support Compiz. I've seen a BaseMosaic option that can be used with the Nvidia drivers that appears to support an almost unlimited number of heads- unfortunately me cheap little cards don't support it. I'm also not sure whether you'll still have all nice maximizing and snapping that TwinView provides, or whether Ubuntu will only see it as one massive display. I put my old trusty ATI card into my new system and installed 12.10. I'm using the opensource radeon drivers again because even in 12.10 I can't get the fglrx binary drivers to do triple head. Unfortunately, even with an unbelievably powerful system the experience is extremely sluggish (much more so than my experience in 12.04). The menu scattering problem appears to be fixed, but I get a lot of nasty Unity display corruption. So finally, my question is this: What hardware / drivers should I use? I'm willing to buy (almost) any video card(s). I have two PCI-Express 3.0 slots on my motherboard (which has an integrated Intel HD card). I'm willing to use ATI or Nvidia cards and willing to run Ubuntu 12.04.1 or 12.10. I'm not a gamer, but do want beautiful and snappy Compiz effects. Does anyone out there have the perfect triple head setup in 12.04 or 12.10? What hardware / drivers are you using? I have those two Nvidia cards but will probably be returning them unless someone knows a way to use them together for a triple head setup. Since I'm having pretty good luck with a single ATI card providing three displays, should I just buy a beefier one with the hopes that it will fix the horrible sluggishness I'm experiencing in 12.10?

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• what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs?

  - by Amumu

  In University, we learn and reinvent the wheel a lot to truly learn the programming concepts. For example, we may learn assembly language to understand, what happens inside the box, and how the system operates, when we execute our code. This helps understanding higher level concepts deeper. For example, memory management like in C is just an abstraction of manually managed memory contents and addresses. The problem is, when we're going to work, usually productivity is required more. I could program my own containers, or string class, or date/time (using POSIX with C system call) to do the job, but then, it would take much longer time to use existing STL or Boost library, which abstract all of those thing and very easy to use. This leads to an issue, that a regular person doesn't need to get through all the low level/under the hood stuffs, who learns only one programming language and using language-related APIs. These people may eventually compete with the mainstream graduates from computer science or software engineer and call themselves programmers. At first, I don't think it's valid to call them programmers. I used to think, a real programmer needs to understand the computer deeply (but not at the electronic level). But then I changed my mind. After all, they get the job done and satisfy all the test criteria (logic, performance, security...), and in business environment, who cares if you're an expert and understand how computer works or not. You may get behind the "amateurs" if you spend to much time learning about how things work inside. It is totally valid for those people to call themselves programmers. This makes me confuse. So, after all, programming should be considered an universal skill? Does programming language and concepts matter or the problems we solve matter? For example, many C/C++ vs Java and other high level language, one of the main reason is because C/C++ features performance, as well as accessing low level facility. One of the main reason (in my opinion), is coding in C/C++ seems complex, so people feel good about it (not trolling anyone, just my observation, and my experience as well. Try to google "C hacker syndrome"). While Java on the other hand, made for simplifying programming tasks to help developers concentrate on solving their problems. Based on Java rationale, if the programing language keeps evolve, one day everyone can map their logic directly with natural language. Everyone can program. On that day, maybe real programmers are mathematicians, who could perform most complex logic (including business logic and academic logic) without worrying about installing/configuring compiler, IDEs? What's our job as a computer scientist/software engineer? To solve computer specific problems or to solve problems in general? For example, take a look at this exame: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/attach/Problem%20Resources/2010WorldFinalProblemSet.pdf . The example requires only basic knowledge about the programming language, but focus more on problem solving with the language. In sum, what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs? A mathematician can be considered a programmer, if he is good enough to use programming language to implement his formula. Can we programmer do this? Probably not for most of us, since we specialize about computer, not math. An electronic engineer, who learns how to use C to program for his devices, can be considered a programmer. If the programming languages keep being simplified, may one day the software engineers, who implements business logic and create softwares, be obsolete? (Not for computer scientist though, since many of the CS topics are scientific, and science won't change, but technology will).

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• Efficiently separating Read/Compute/Write steps for concurrent processing of entities in Entity/Component systems

  - by TravisG

  Setup I have an entity-component architecture where Entities can have a set of attributes (which are pure data with no behavior) and there exist systems that run the entity logic which act on that data. Essentially, in somewhat pseudo-code: Entity { id; map<id_type, Attribute> attributes; } System { update(); vector<Entity> entities; } A system that just moves along all entities at a constant rate might be MovementSystem extends System { update() { for each entity in entities position = entity.attributes["position"]; position += vec3(1,1,1); } } Essentially, I'm trying to parallelise update() as efficiently as possible. This can be done by running entire systems in parallel, or by giving each update() of one system a couple of components so different threads can execute the update of the same system, but for a different subset of entities registered with that system. Problem In reality, these systems sometimes require that entities interact(/read/write data from/to) each other, sometimes within the same system (e.g. an AI system that reads state from other entities surrounding the current processed entity), but sometimes between different systems that depend on each other (i.e. a movement system that requires data from a system that processes user input). Now, when trying to parallelize the update phases of entity/component systems, the phases in which data (components/attributes) from Entities are read and used to compute something, and the phase where the modified data is written back to entities need to be separated in order to avoid data races. Otherwise the only way (not taking into account just "critical section"ing everything) to avoid them is to serialize parts of the update process that depend on other parts. This seems ugly. To me it would seem more elegant to be able to (ideally) have all processing running in parallel, where a system may read data from all entities as it wishes, but doesn't write modifications to that data back until some later point. The fact that this is even possible is based on the assumption that modification write-backs are usually very small in complexity, and don't require much performance, whereas computations are very expensive (relatively). So the overhead added by a delayed-write phase might be evened out by more efficient updating of entities (by having threads work more % of the time instead of waiting). A concrete example of this might be a system that updates physics. The system needs to both read and write a lot of data to and from entities. Optimally, there would be a system in place where all available threads update a subset of all entities registered with the physics system. In the case of the physics system this isn't trivially possible because of race conditions. So without a workaround, we would have to find other systems to run in parallel (which don't modify the same data as the physics system), other wise the remaining threads are waiting and wasting time. However, that has disadvantages Practically, the L3 cache is pretty much always better utilized when updating a large system with multiple threads, as opposed to multiple systems at once, which all act on different sets of data. Finding and assembling other systems to run in parallel can be extremely time consuming to design well enough to optimize performance. Sometimes, it might even not be possible at all because a system just depends on data that is touched by all other systems. Solution? In my thinking, a possible solution would be a system where reading/updating and writing of data is separated, so that in one expensive phase, systems only read data and compute what they need to compute, and then in a separate, performance-wise cheap, write phase, attributes of entities that needed to be modified are finally written back to the entities. The Question How might such a system be implemented to achieve optimal performance, as well as making programmer life easier? What are the implementation details of such a system and what might have to be changed in the existing EC-architecture to accommodate this solution?

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• Open Source MariaDB, the MySQL fork to replace MySQL?

  - by Jenson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Frankly speaking, I’ve been out of touch with the Open source world for quite some time. Until recently, after I’ve joined the new government agency, I managed to do some research while given time to learn new technologies and languages. I started reading tech blogs and tech news again (since I’m not as busy as before where I need to rush for project deadlines in and out), and I spotted this MariaDB that really attracts my attention, this is the link to ZDNet article - http://www.zdnet.com/open-source-mariadb-a-mysql-fork-challenges-oracle-7000008311/ Open-Source MariaDB, a MySQL fork, challenges Oracle Yes, you’re right, MariaDB is a MySQL fork, and as mentioned in the article, MariaDB is run by the founder of MySQL, Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, and he claims MariaDB is faster, more secure and has more features than MySQL. I’m actually very excited to know that the code is maintained by the same dedicated core team of MySQL in the past 18 years. They even bother to form a foundation, the MariaDB Foundation, to promote MariaDB. Already, there’s a lot of open source software officially supporting MariaDB, such as  Drupal, Jelastic – Java in the cloud, Kajona, MediaWiki, phpMyAdmin, Plone, SaltOs, WordPress, and Zend Framework. But the hosting service provider might not be readily supporting MariaDB in their hosting solution. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Time will tell whether MariaDB would be the real replacement for MySQL, I’m sorry I don’t think I should use alternative here ;-) For more information, please visit MariaDB official site. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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• My 2D collision code does not work as expected. How do I fix it?

  - by farmdve

  I have a simple 2D game with a tile-based map. I am new to game development, I followed the LazyFoo tutorials on SDL. The tiles are in a bmp file, but each tile inside it corresponds to an internal number of the type of tile(color, or wall). The game is simple, but the code is a lot so I can only post snippets. // Player moved out of the map if((player.box.x < 0)) player.box.x += GetVelocity(player, 0); if((player.box.y < 0)) player.box.y += GetVelocity(player, 1); if((player.box.x > (LEVEL_WIDTH - DOT_WIDTH))) player.box.x -= GetVelocity(player, 0); if((player.box.y > (LEVEL_HEIGHT - DOT_HEIGHT))) player.box.y -= GetVelocity(player, 1); // Now that we are here, we check for collisions if(touches_wall(player.box)) { if(player.box.x < player.prev_x) { player.box.x += GetVelocity(player, 0); } if(player.box.x > player.prev_x) { player.box.x -= GetVelocity(player, 0); } if(player.box.y < player.prev_y) { player.box.y += GetVelocity(player, 1); } if(player.box.y > player.prev_y) { player.box.y -= GetVelocity(player, 1); } } player.prev_x = player.box.x; player.prev_y = player.box.y; Let me explain, player is a structure with the following contents typedef struct { Rectangle box; //Player position on a map(tile or whatever). int prev_x, prev_y; // Previous positions int key_press[3]; // Stores which key was pressed/released. Limited to three keys. E.g Left,right and perhaps jump if possible in 2D int velX, velY; // Velocity for X and Y coordinate. //Health int health; bool main_character; uint32_t jump_ticks; } Player; And Rectangle is just a typedef of SDL_Rect. GetVelocity is a function that according to the second argument, returns the velocity for the X or Y axis. This code I have basically works, however inside the if(touches_wall(player.box)) if statement, I have 4 more. These 4 if statements are responsible for detecting collision on all 4 sides(up,down,left,right). However, they also act as a block for any other movement. Example: I move down the object and collide with the wall, as I continue to move down and still collide with the wall, I wish to move left or right, which is indeed possible(not to mention in 3D games), but remember the 4 if statements? They are preventing me from moving anywhere. The original code on the LazyFoo Productions website has no problems, but it was written in C++, so I had to rewrite most of it to work, which is probably where the problem comes from. I also use a different method of moving, than the one in the examples. Of course, that was just an example. I wish to be able to move no matter at which wall I collide. Before this bit of code, I had another one that had more logic in there, but it was flawed.

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• Production Access Denied! Who caused this rule anyways?

  - by Matt Watson

  One of the biggest challenges for most developers is getting access to production servers. In smaller dev teams of less than about 5 people everyone usually has access. Then you hire developer #6, he messes something up in production... and now nobody has access. That is how it always starts in small dev teams. I think just about every rule of life there is gets created this way. One person messes it up for the rest of us. Rules are then put in place to try and prevent it from happening again.Breaking the rules is in our nature. In this example it is for good cause and a necessity to support our applications and troubleshoot problems as they arise. So how do developers typically break the rules? Some create their own method to collect log files off servers so they can see them. Expensive log management programs can collect log files, but log files alone are not enough. Centralizing where important errors are logged to is common. Some lucky developers are given production server access by the IT operations team out of necessity. Wait. That's not fair to all developers and knowingly breaks the company rule!  When customers complain or the system is down, the rules go out the window. Commonly lead developers get production access because they are ultimately responsible for supporting the application and may be the only person who knows how to fix it. The problem with only giving lead developers production access is it doesn't scale from a support standpoint. Those key employees become the go to people to help solve application problems, but they also become a bottleneck. They end up spending up to half of their time every day helping resolve application defects, performance problems, or whatever the fire of the day is. This actually the last thing you want your lead developers doing. They should be working on something more strategic like major enhancements to the product. Having production access can actually be a curse if you are the guy stuck hunting down log files all day. Application defects are good tasks for junior developers. They can usually handle figuring out simple application problems. But nothing is worse than being a junior developer who can't figure out those problems and the back log of them grows and grows. Some of them require production server access to verify a deployment was done correctly, verify config settings, view log files, or maybe just restart an application. Since the junior developers don't have access, they end up bugging the developers who do have access or they track down a system admin to help. It can take hours or days to see server information that would take seconds or minutes if they had access of their own. It is very frustrating to the developer trying to solve the problem, the system admin being forced to help, and most importantly your customers who are not happy about the situation. This process is terribly inefficient. Production database access is also important for solving application problems, but presents a lot of risk if developers are given access. They could see data they shouldn't.  They could write queries on accident to update data, delete data, or merely select every record from every table and bring your database to its knees. Since most of the application we create are data driven, it can be very difficult to track down application bugs without access to the production databases.Besides it being against the rule, why don't all developers have access? Most of the time it comes down to security, change of control, lack of training, and other valid reasons. Developers have been known to tinker with different settings to try and solve a problem and in the process forget what they changed and made the problem worse. So it is a double edge sword. Don't give them access and fixing bugs is more difficult, or give them access and risk having more bugs or major outages being created!Matt WatsonFounder, CEOStackifyAgile Support for Agile Developers

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